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Tuesday, March 15, 2016

France: Gripes about Jews being everywhere in the media, banks,government are commonplace.

How To Be a Jew in France
Four years after Mohammed Merah’s horrific shooting spree in Toulouse, can things get worse in Europe?
By Elena Servettaz

The Marais neighborhood in Paris’s 4th arrondissement has long been
known as the Jewish quarter, though it is also popular with the gay
community—most Jewish shops and businesses close for Sabbath. But on a
recent Saturday on rue des Rosiers, at Florence Kahn’s shop, which is
famous for its Russian and Central European Jewish cuisine, people were
queuing, seemingly unaware it was Shabbat. “One apple strudel, a slice
of cheesecake, and half a pound of pastrami please,” a mother of two
said to the assistant behind the counter. Surprised, I asked her if
serving meat and dairy together means the establishment is not kosher.
“Of course, it is kosher!” replied the shop assistant, offended. “But
not approved by the beit din, it depends on people: Some
consider it kosher and some don’t.” An old man behind me joked that the
fact that Florence Kahn’s shop opens on Saturdays might help protect
them from anti-Semitic vandals.

Being a Jew in France is no longer easy. Anxiety is in the air even
if the State has guaranteed our protection. Gripes about Jews being
everywhere in the French media, banks, and “even in government” are
commonplace. It became normal to demonstrate with pro-Palestinian
slogans in the streets and blame French Jews for Israel’s actions, which
are typically reported as monstrous. We are still a long way from the
Dreyfus Affair, but there’s a new wave of anti-Semitism in France,
which is often packaged as anti-Zionism, but employs all the classical
tropes. It is easy to forget which kind of anti-Semitism is which. First
there was stand-up comedian Dieudonné’s
inflammatory act, which mocked the Holocaust, prompting Prime Minister
Manuel Valls to ban his shows for racism and anti-Semitism. Many French
people, particularly Dieudonné’s fans, saw this as a “Jewish
conspiracy.” There are everyday physical attacks in the street. The
result is a familiar kind of fear.

I remember very clearly the first time I felt this fear several years
ago. It happened quite suddenly. I was shopping in the Galeries
Lafayette department store. The vendor, a young Arab man, was very
helpful and cheerful. I was trying clothes on while he was taking care
of his other customers. At that period Marine Le Pen’s far-right
National Front was rising in the polls, and he asked me what I thought
about Le Pen.

“What do you want me to think about Le Pen?” I asked him, laughing.
“I would sooner forget she exists.” The young man seemed wanting to test
me more: “She is the devil, but many Catholics in France admire her.
Don’t you? You are Catholic and you don’t like her?” I was very
surprised that discussion in a luxury shop turned so personal, but
answered trying to make another joke: “Who told you I was Catholic?”

But the conversation stopped the very same minute. “Jewish!” he
hissed and recoiled from me as if I was a leper. He went away and he
asked his colleague to help me instead. Le Pen was no more a devil for
him, but I was.

Should I have reacted that day, and how could I do that? It’s very
bizarre that in Judaism so much is about the transmission, but there’s
something else that most Jewish families pass on with their traditions,
knowledge, and philosophy—it is this bizarre behavior when you prefer to
accept aggression rather to fight it. It was that way for some in
Germany during the Third Reich—when many Jews had no choice but first to
accept some rules, then agree to wear a yellow star, then to abandon
their homes and ultimately be murdered in the Holocaust.

In a different part of Paris, the 12th arrondissement, where French Jews
are more discreet than in the Marais, kosher butchers have for security
reasons removed Stars of David from their shopfronts. Gone are the
Hebrew inscriptions and beit din certificates. None show their
Jewish origins anymore. Most French Jews are Sephardim with origins in
North African countries who still remember their families’ past
experiences living in Muslim countries. Today’s France gives some of
them a similar feeling.